Challenge for the Pacific

mountain artillery, and engineers. It was commanded by General Kawaguchi. The left wing, composed of similar arms and similar strength, was led by Major General Yumio Nasu. In reserve was the 16th Infantry, which Maruyama intended to use once Kawaguchi and Nasu had broken through.

The attack would begin just after sunset, following the scheduled aerial bombardment of the Americans.

October 23 seemed like a dull day to the fighter pilots on Henderson Field. The big enemy push was expected hourly, and yet the skies were free of red-balled aircraft. In the morning, Captain Joe Foss and a few other Wildcat pilots escorted a Catalina south toward Noumea. Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb, Commandant of the Marine Corps, was aboard. Holcomb had come to visit Vandegrift, and now, he and some other generals were flying down to confer with Admiral Halsey.

Foss and his comrades dipped their wings in farewell, and flew back to Henderson.

At noon they were hanging on their noses clawing for altitude.

Sixteen Japanese bombers were coming in, escorted by a few Zeros. The Wildcats closed. In the rear of the formation, Joe Foss took a last look around. High above, like a flight of silvery flying fish, he spotted about eighteen Zeros. They were coming down in a screaming dive. They flashed beneath him.

Foss dove to overtake them. A Wildcat crossed his course firing into a Zero trying desperately to escape. Another Zero was on the Wildcat’s tail. Foss swung in behind him. Only a few feet away, he pressed the button.

Ba—loom!

The enemy plane was gone. It had blown up with the vehemence characteristic of the Zero. Foss saw the pilot pop from his cockpit like a pea pressed from a pod. The motor went spinning into space, and Foss tore through an aerial dustbin of bits and pieces of aircraft. Below him, the plane’s wing section was sailing downward like a leaf.

Foss banked hard. He went after a Zero which went into a dive, pulling out and looping. Foss cut close inside, and the Zero went over on its back. Foss was upside-down, too, when he triggered a leading shot at the red-balled fighter and caught him in a terrible, converging burst.

His second kill had blown up.

Foss ducked again to avoid debris, and suddenly a Zero came from nowhere, slow-rolling as though in a victory celebration, and Foss’s plane again shook from the recoil of its wing guns. There was a disintegrating flash, and the pilot popped from his cockpit and nearly hit Foss’s plane.

Now there were two Zeros coming at Foss, one head-on, the other from an angle. Foss rushed at the first one. The planes drove toward each other with smoking guns. The Japanese swerved right, and Foss aimed a burst behind his motor. Streaming flames, the Zero came on—exploding off Foss’s right wing and rocking the Wildcat with the force of the blast.

Now Foss’s plane was smoking. The enemy had scored hits. Foss went over in a dive for home. A Zero came after him, overran, and Foss fired his last rounds at him in a useless burst. Another Zero raked him on a side pass. Foss radioed for help, and two Marine fliers came roaring over to shoot down both Zeros.

Foss reached the field safely, bringing in his fourth damaged plane since he had begun fighting from Henderson on October 10. One more shot-up Wildcat, he thought, and I’ll be a Japanese ace.² But he was already twice an American ace, with eleven aircraft downed in fourteen days.

Other newly made aces were rolling exultantly over the field, among them Lieutenant Jack Conger, a wiry gamecock who had chased a Zero all the way up to Savo before sending him down in flames. Of the twenty Zeros that came down to Guadalcanal that October 23, every one was destroyed. So was one bomber, while four others staggered home trailing smoke and flames.

Once again the Cactus Air Force had fought to save the ground troops, for Maruyama’s anticipated bombardment never came off.

Nor would his attack.

General Maruyama was beside himself. Shortly after the raid from Rabaul was repulsed, he was notified that General Kawaguchi had not yet reached his assembly area. He could not possibly attack at sunset. Maruyama had no alternative but to postpone his assault another day. He did, and then, in an icy rage, he telephoned Kawaguchi and relieved him of his command. Colonel Toshinaro Shoji took his place.

Next, Maruyama attempted to reach General Sumoyoshi to tell him to postpone the Matanikau thrust until sunset of October 24. He could not reach him. As happened so frequently to both sides in that moist, dissolving jungle, communications had broken down.

But Maruyama did reach Hyakutake, who quickly informed Yamamoto, who angrily sent his fleet tankers south and ordered Kondo’s force to withdraw for refueling.

Yamamoto was incensed. One carrier had already been lost because of delays, and here he was forced to withdraw his entire fleet from the target area. More, he was made uneasy by reports of growing American naval strength along the supply line to Guadalcanal. A patrol plane from the Gilbert Islands had sighted Enterprise steaming north, and a few days before that Hornet had been detected. Then, suddenly, like ghosts, the American carriers had vanished. What did it mean? Neither Yamamoto nor Chuichi Nagumo, both of whom carried the memory of Midway burned in their brains, could supply the answer. One thing Yamamoto knew, though: he would brook no more delays, and he informed Hyakutake of his displeasure.

Hyakutake contacted Maruyama again. There was no doubt: the attack would go forward at sunset of October 24. By early morning of October 25 Hyakutake should receive the message signaling capture of the airfield. It was one word: “Banzai!” Upon receipt of it, the Koli Detachment would be ordered to land to the east.

Meanwhile, Maruyama inquired, had he remembered to specify that when the American commander came to the mouth of the Matanikau to surrender, he must come unarmed and accompanied only by an interpreter?

The American commander was not on Guadalcanal.

The Catalina which Foss and his comrades had escorted south that morning of October 23 also carried Alexander Archer Vandegrift. Admiral Halsey had had the grace and the common sense to summon the ground commander to an important conference at Noumea. Kelly Turner was there, too, along with Lieutenant General Holcomb, Major General Harmon, Major General Alexander Patch, commander of the U.S. Army’s Americal Infantry Division from which the 164th was drawn, and which was now scheduled to relieve the First Marine Division—when and if it was possible.

Halsey sat smoking while the others settled around a table. Then he asked Vandegrift to outline the situation. Vandegrift did. His soft, courteous voice was charged with urgency. The question was one of reinforcement of every kind. He needed more airplanes and the rest of the Americal Division and a regiment from the Second Marine Division, then enroute to the Pacific. His men were worn out. There were now seven hundred new cases of malaria a week.

Holcomb and Harmon spoke. They agreed, vigorously. Kelly Turner spoke. He was stung by the implied rebuke to his efforts. He rehearsed all of his attempts to supply the island, he said there were getting to be fewer transports and fewer warships to protect them. There were no sheltering bases at Guadalcanal. They still needed the seaplane base at Ndeni to provide aerial cover of the supply line. Solomons’ waters were too narrow for maneuver. Torpedo Junction swarmed with submarines.

Halsey heard him out, his knuckly fingers drumming the desk, his eyes thoughtful under the shaggy gray brows. Then he turned to Vandegrift.

“Are we going to evacuate or hold?”

“I can hold,” Archer Vandegrift said softly. “But I’ve got to have more active support than I’ve been getting.”

“All right,” Halsey said. “Go on back. I’ll promise you everything I’ve got.”³

Archer Vandegrift did go back, to find Guadalcanal ablaze with battle again.

In the United States Marine Corps there is a legend concerning the battle between